Eric Thord joined Sorhea with an unusual idea of what a job could lead to. The Lyon-area security company wanted a general manager to restructure it and prepare it for sale. Thord arrived intending to buy it. There are more modest ways of answering a job advertisement, but this one explains a good deal about the career that followed.
He entered the business in 2010. At the end of 2012, with UI Gestion involved, he became a shareholder in the holding company. The company-building project that grew from that transaction eventually became Vitaprotech, then Hirsch Group. Thord has led the group since 2012. Its products now cover the perimeter of a site, the decisions made at its doors, and the video and software used to understand what is happening inside.
The acquisitions supply the dates. The more interesting thread is the effort to connect what he bought. A fence detector and an access-control system may sit in different product catalogues; the customer has one site to protect. Thord’s career has increasingly revolved around closing that distance.
Buying with the intention to stay
Before security, there were industrial businesses. In 1993, Thord worked on transferring encapsulation processes from a factory in Le Mans to the United States. He later returned to manage the business under new ownership, then worked on restructuring other small industrial companies. His education combined materials engineering at Polytech with an MBA at HEC Paris.
That background gives his later choices a practical setting. A process has to survive its move between factories. A company has to work after a change in ownership. Both assignments invite close attention to the machinery underneath the announcement. By 2005, Thord was looking to acquire businesses already performing well, and he identified security as a sector with room to grow.
His executive experience included Vesta Capital, where he led a group specializing in intrusion systems, and Sorhea, where his work included expanding international sales and overseeing its leveraged acquisition. The recurring subject was a business with technical knowledge that could travel further. Security supplied a field in which local specialists could become part of a wider offering.
The investor at the table
Thord’s account of his first leveraged buyout begins with a financing problem. The business cost €15 million, and he lacked enough personal capital to fund the purchase. A bank could finance roughly half. An investor made the arrangement possible. The mathematics preceded the mythology.
He also described choosing a partner partly through the quality of the relationship. Then came the less photogenic work: monthly consolidated reporting, debt measures and cash-flow commitments. His first investor needed liquidity after three years, and the parties agreed to sell. In the subsequent 2012 transaction, he invested alongside a fund with an ambition to grow through acquisitions and exports.
By 2018, another handover marked a new scale of ambition. Eurazeo backed the group as ST Group became Vitaprotech. UI Gestion’s account described a company that had grown from about €9 million in revenue at the original buyout to nearly €30 million. Thord wanted to build on the complementary work of Sorhea and TIL Technologies and extend the business internationally.
Those complementary activities matter to the story. Perimeter protection detects an attempted entry. Access control decides who may pass. Putting the two disciplines together gives a buyer a way to address more of the same security problem. It also gives management an integration job that continues well beyond signing day.
A camera belongs in the conversation
In 2019, Thord was explicit about a gap he wanted to fill. The group needed a stronger presence in video surveillance, particularly the software that could manage video intelligently. His interest was in making the information useful to access control and intrusion systems. Buying another device manufacturer would not, on its own, answer that question.
That year brought ARD, TDSi and Vauban Systems into the group. Vauban’s founders were to retain operational management roles and invest as shareholders. The arrangement kept the people who knew the business involved in its future. For Thord, the expanding portfolio was accompanied by a growing network of managers with their own products and customers.
Foxstream later added video analytics to the intelligent-monitoring side of the group. Its founder, Jean-Baptiste Ducatez, said he had known Thord for more than a decade and that an earlier invitation to join had already been made. He remained at the company’s helm. An acquisition announcement can look sudden from outside; this one followed a relationship measured in years.
Harper Chalice joined in 2023, adding British perimeter-security expertise to a group already present in the country through TDSi. The stated plan included bringing Sorhea products into the UK market for critical sites. It was another example of buying a capability and a local foothold together.
The name that crossed the Atlantic
The 2024 transaction changed the group’s geography and, eventually, its name. Vitaprotech agreed to acquire Identiv’s physical security, access-card and identity-reader business for an announced $145 million, subject to adjustments. The sale closed on September 6, 2024. Identiv’s initial closing filing recorded approximately $144.2 million in cash consideration.
Hirsch came with that business. So did a position in the US federal security market that complemented Vitaprotech’s European activities. Thord called the acquisition This acquisition is a perfect match
. The rationale was geographic as well as technical: capabilities developed on either side of the Atlantic could reach a wider set of customers.
Steven Humphreys, formerly Identiv’s CEO, became deputy CEO of the group. Mark Allen became CEO of the Hirsch business. The distinction matters: Thord continued to lead the overall group, with other executives responsible for substantial parts of its operations. The company he was building now required a wider leadership structure.
On January 1, 2026, the group adopted the Hirsch name. An acquired business had supplied the identity for the larger organization. A buyer can take ownership of a name; earning continued confidence in it remains a daily assignment. The change gave the expanding collection a recognizable banner, while bringing expectations built over years along with it.
Keeping the people in the picture
A useful view of Thord comes from someone who sold to him. John Davies, reflecting on TDSi’s move into Vitaprotech, connected his choice of buyer to Thord’s idea of assembling the group. Davies saw a version of the larger business he had wanted to build himself, supported by resources he had not possessed.
Davies also described practical cooperation: TDSi’s software team was writing software for other parts of the group. That detail brings the acquisition strategy down to working level. People acquired with one business were contributing beyond its original boundaries. The larger organization could create more places for their skills to be useful.
Thord added another experienced figure in 2025 when John Moss joined the Vitaprotech board as a director and senior adviser. His remit included product innovation, routes to market and partnerships. Growth was widening the circle of people expected to help shape the business, alongside the executives brought in through the Hirsch transaction.
One group, several front doors
In May 2025, Thord described a reorganization due to begin on July 1. The aim was to arrange the offering around how customers buy. Hirsch would serve integrators. Prysm would focus on software for service operators and equipment manufacturers. Vauban Systems and TDSi would address distributors. ARD would retain a service-intensive, turnkey offering.
That is a revealing stage in a buyer’s career. After accumulating companies, Thord was explaining the group through customer relationships. An integrator assembling a system and a customer asking for installation and commissioning need different kinds of support. The organizational chart had to make room for both.
“Notre ambition est de simplifier l’accès à la sécurité de demain.”
Eric Thord / May 2025“Our ambition is to simplify access to tomorrow’s security.” Translation.
The effort also had an engineering budget. In that period, the group stated that 25 percent of its workforce and 10 percent of revenue were devoted to research and development. Its priorities included cloud, cybersecurity, interoperability, unified management, artificial intelligence and user experience. These are the disciplines needed to make a broader offering function as a connected system.
The next purchase is only part of the job
In June 2026, Thord was profiled as a candidate for the EY Entrepreneur of the Year award. He set out a revenue ambition of €270 million by 2028, alongside an EBITDA-margin target of 20 to 25 percent. Those are goals, with dates attached; they remain a description of where he wants the group to go.
For a customer, the value of this arrangement has to appear in ordinary work. The operator responding to an alarm needs a clear view of the event. The installer needs products that can be configured together. The distributor needs an offering it can explain and support. Thord’s channel choices acknowledge those different responsibilities. The test for the enlarged group is whether its added capabilities reach each of those people in a useful form. That places everyday installation and support alongside acquisitions in the work of building the group.
The story began with a manager joining a company he hoped to buy. It now involves businesses, engineering teams and customers spread across countries. Each new acquisition enlarges what the group can offer and adds to what it must coordinate. Thord’s next chapter will be written in that coordination: whether the pieces he has assembled make the customer’s work easier, one site at a time.